Education

As Community College Enrollment Grows, Teachers Say Pay Raises Will Resolve Understaffing

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By Sam Drysdale

As enrollment at community colleges booms under the state’s new free tuition program, the faculty that teach and support the burgeoning population are asking for their first wage equity adjustment in 25 years. “Our colleges are facing a wage and working conditions crisis that threatens board initiatives like the equity agenda and workforce development,” Joe Nardoni, vice president of the union that represents the 15 community colleges’ faculty and professional staff members, told members of the Board of Higher Education on Tuesday. Lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey made community college free for all Massachusetts residents starting this past fall, saying the program would create opportunities for low-income Bay Staters and promote racial equity. The “free” label seems to have succeeded in attracting more students to campus: between the fall of 2023 and fall 2024, the first semester that tuition and fees were waived, the state’s 15 community colleges added 9,492 students—a 14% boost. That jump followed another annual enrollment increase, 8.7% in 2023, after lawmakers and Healey that year made community college free for students 25 and older, which reversed more than a decade of declines in community college enrollment.

Beacon Hill News

Auditor DiZoglio Says Senate Democrats are Breaking the Law with Audit Response

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By Alison Kuznitz

The group of Senate Democrats tasked with handling Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s quest to probe the legislature agreed Monday to meet with her office. While senators said they are looking for “prompt and constructive engagement,” DiZoglio said the response to her audit launch is the latest example of lawmakers “breaking the law.”

In a five-page letter responding to DiZoglio’s repeated outreach, subcommittee chair Sen. Cindy Friedman and Sens. Will Brownsberger, Jo Comerford and Paul Feeney proposed three possible times to meet on either Jan. 29 or Jan. 30.

Haverhill

Hospital Oversight Bill Adds Penalties for Missing Filings, Limits Sales/Leaseback Deals, More

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Lawmakers rushed a hospital oversight bill to Gov. Maura Healey on Monday, agreeing on policy responses to the Steward Health Care crisis that aim to better regulate private equity firms and stiffen penalties for entities that fail to submit required information. The health care market reform bill would give state health regulators and Attorney General Andrea Campbell more regulatory oversight and enforcement authority over transactions involving private equity investors, health care real estate investment trusts and management services organizations. Officials have blamed Steward’s private equity-funded purchases of such hospitals as Holy Family Hospital in Methuen and Haverhill and its later sale and leaseback of the hospitals’ buildings at inflated prices as factors behind the company’s bankruptcy. The late-session breakthrough leaves little time for any back and forth with Healey on potential changes to the bill and essentially gives the governor a take-it-or-leave-it dynamic where she can sign the bill into law or let it die by pocket veto since the legislature that drafted the sweeping bill is about to dissolve. The bill increases penalties for hospitals that fail to comply with data reporting requirements, mandates that lessors notify the state 60 days before repossessing medical equipment, overhauls how regulators manage care costs and assess resources, and blocks the Department of Public Health from issuing a license to establish or maintain acute care hospitals whose main campuses are leased from a real estate investment trust.

Beacon Hill News

Legislature Set to Pass Bills Partly Responding to Collapse of Steward Health Care

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By Colin A. Young

Democrats, who have been negotiating separate health care industry oversight and pharmaceutical drug reform bills for months, said Friday night they resolved their differences and plan to put the bills up for votes this week in the final days of the two-year term. One bill promises to strength state oversight to guard against the kind of failure at Steward Health Care that threatened Holy Family Hospital campuses in Haverhill and Methuen, among other properties. Senate President Karen E. Spilka suggested the so-called Steward response bill will not be the legislature’s last word on the subject. “Additionally, the entry of private equity into the health care space has had profound and lasting effects on providers’ ability to deliver care, and we are still trying to understand its full impact. While it is vital that we continue to study those effects and take action in the future to further mitigate them, the market oversight bill begins to address the damaging role of private equity and put important initial guardrails in place to attempt to prevent another crisis like the one faced by Steward,” Spilka said.

Beacon Hill News

Legislators Eye Cameras on School and Passenger Buses to Stop Scofflaws

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By Chris Lisinski and Alison Kuznitz

Boxing Day was no holiday in the Massachusetts legislature, where lawmakers advanced a laundry list of bills that would expire without action in the next six days. One bill, as the House and Senate returned to action Thursday, would allow school systems to place cameras on school buses to catch drivers who fail to stop when lights are flashing. Any images or video could only be obtained for purposes other than enforcement of failing to stop, or defending against such an allegation, by a court order, according to a Senate Ways and Means Committee bill summary. The House approved the school bus camera bill in July. Meanwhile, the MBTA and other regional transit authorities could use bus-mounted camera systems to enforce dedicated bus lanes and bus stops under a bill the House passed Thursday, after it gained traction in that chamber’s Ways and Means Committee.

Beacon Hill News

Healey Comment Suggests Saving Haverhill Campus of Holy Family Hospital Still Possible

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WHAV staff contributed to this report by Alison Kuznitz. Gov. Maura T. Healey hinted Thursday that Holy Family Hospital’s Haverhill campus might still be saved. With potential deals, such as Lawrence General Hospital’s potential bid for Holy Family Hospital, still up in the air, the governor’s new mention of six campuses for five Steward Hospitals suggests a potential path for keeping Holy Family Hospital. As only WHAV reported last Saturday, Sen. Barry R. Finegold s said he didn’t know the contents of Lawrence General Hospital’s final bid, but noted, “I believe the Haverhill Campus of Holy Family is integral to the health care needs of the Merrimack Valley and should he included in LGH bid.”

Healey pleaded Thursday for the company’s lenders to strike a deal to allow the facilities to be sold, acknowledging financial stakes for taxpayers amid repeated delays. The governor confirmed Massachusetts has been sending financial aid to the hospitals to keep them afloat through August, but she wouldn’t say whether the latest snag in U.S. Bankruptcy Court may end up costing Massachusetts more money.

Beacon Hill News

Negotiators, Including Finegold, Seek to Hash Out Economic Development Bill Differences

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Lawmakers negotiating a major economic development bill have just over a week to strike a compromise on a bond bill reauthorizing the state’s longstanding life sciences initiative. The Senate favors a smaller borrowing and tax incentive package for the life sciences sector compared to the House and Gov. Maura T. Healey, and the differences need to be settled during closed-door negotiations. Conference committee members Reps. Aaron Michlewitz, Jerald Parisella and David Muradian, and Sens. Barry R. Finegold, senate chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies; Mike Rodrigues; and Peter Durant met for the first time Monday.

Haverhill

Sens. Markey and Sanders Plan to Force Steward CEO to Answer Questions in Congress

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A congressional committee led by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey plans to subpoena Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, after reports of financial mismanagement have led to the hospital chain declaring bankruptcy. In the course of its bankruptcy proceedings, Steward opened bids on its seven hospitals operating in Massachusetts, including Holy Family Hospital with campuses in Methuen and Haverhill, which were due at the start of this week. As of Wednesday, the state’s top public health official had no information on where those bids stood. “Perhaps more than anyone else in America, Dr. Ralph de la Torre, the CEO of Steward Health Care, is the poster child for the type of outrageous corporate greed that is permeating through our for-profit health care system,” read a joint statement Thursday from Markey, who chairs the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the HELP Committee. “Working with private equity forces, Dr. de la Torre became obscenely wealthy by loading up hospitals from Massachusetts to Arizona with billions in debt and sold the land underneath these hospitals to real estate executives who charge unsustainably high rent.